Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, was derided today for having called on the unemployed to get on the bus in order to seek work.

Duncan Smith said he wanted people to make a "reasonable effort" to take available work, even if it had to be found elsewhere.

His comments were similar to those of Norman Tebbit, who in 1981 as employment secretary in Margaret Thatcher's government, said that his unemployed father had "got on his bike and looked for work, and kept looking 'til he found it".

Speaking on BBC2's Newsnight, Duncan Smith said: "There was a very good programme the other day that talked about Merthyr Tydfil and the fact there were jobs in Cardiff; But many of them [the unemployed in Merthyr] had become static and didn't know that if they got on a bus for an hour's journey, they'd be in Cardiff and could look for the jobs there.

"My point is we need to recognise the jobs don't come to you."

He denied having "a get on your bike moment". "What we're saying is: when work is available, you take reasonable effort to take that work and to work as hard as you can to do it," he said.

Duncan Smith also discussed his upcoming "phenomenal" work programme to help the long-term unemployed, which would be the "biggest of its kind since the depression".

A spokesman for the Public and Commercial Services union called the former Tory leader's comments a "disgusting insult".

"Duncan Smith has been trying to tread the road to redemption in the nation's eyes, reinventing himself as a caring Conservative.

"Well, it didn't take long for the mask to slip, and for him to reveal himself as a Tebbit clone with this disgusting insult, that is part of the coalition's attempt to cast vulnerable members of our society as the new deserving and undeserving poor."

Douglas Alexander, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said the minister did not seem to understand that "to move people from welfare into work requires there to be work available".

"Like Norman Tebbit before him, Iain Duncan Smith seems sadly to have retreated into the Conservative comfort zone of blame and disdain."

Meanwhile a poll for today's Independent newspaper shows that three in five voters believe George Osborne's spending cuts are unfair because they will hit the poor rather than the better off.

The ComRes survey found that 59% of respondents considered the cuts were unfair because the poorest would be hit, while only 30% accepted Osborne's assertion that the better off would bear the brunt.

Among voters who backed the Liberal Democrats at the last election, 59% said the cuts were unfair as against just 34% of Conservative voters.

The findings are a setback for the coalition, particularly Nick Clegg, who said the Lib Dems had sought to ensure the measures were fair, and who challenged an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that they were "regressive".

The poll found that 36% thought that the Lib Dems should leave the coalition because of the scale of the cuts, while 51% thought they should stay.